Sociodemographic Effects on the Onset and Recovery of ADL Disability among Chinese Oldest-old

By pooling the data from the three waves (1998, 2000, and 2002) of the Chinese Longitudinal Health and Longevity Survey, this study examines the association of sociodemographic factors with the onset and recovery of ADL disability including changes in functional status before dying. The results show that the sociodemographic factors play some specific roles in disability dynamics at very high ages even after controlling for a rich set of confounders. Our results also point out that the conventional method, which excludes the information of ADL changes before dying due to unavailability of the data, overestimates the effects of age, gender, ethnicity, and living alone on disability transitions whereas it underestimates the effects of SES, although such discrepancies are not very big compared with the results including information of ADL changes before dying.ADL disability, China, oldest old, socio-demographic effect

Exposure and vulnerability tonatural disasters for world\u27scities

This paper aims to investigate exposure and vulnerability to natural disasters for cities with 300,000 inhabitants or more in 2018. The report uses data from the 2018 revision of World Urbanization Prospects, the spatial hotspot data on exposure and vulnerability to natural disasters, as well as sources for estimating the urban extent of each city and for the classification of coastal and inland cities. The 2018 revision of World Urbanization Prospects includes estimates and projections for 1,860 urban agglomerations with 300,000 inhabitants or more as of mid-2018. The spatial hotspot data, produced by Columbia University and the World Bank, includes information for six types of disaster, that is, cyclones, floods, droughts, earthquakes, landslides and volcanic eruptions. Based on these data, the paper examines exposure of the 1,860 cities to the six types of disaster and the vulnerability to disaster-related mortality and economic losses. Variations in exposure to risk of and vulnerability to natural disasters across city sizes, development groups, Sustainable Development Goals region and income groups are also presented. The present study seeks to inform urban planners and policy makers about the need to strengthen resilience, improve preparedness, and adapt strategies of cities to address the effects of natural disasters with a view to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals

Air pollution shortens life expectancy and health expectancy for older adults: the case of China

pre-printBackground: Outdoor air pollution is one of the most worrying environmental threats China faces today. Comprehensive and quantitative analysis of the health consequences of air pollution in China is lacking. This study reports age-sex-specific life expectancy (LE) and health expectancies (HEs) corresponding to different levels of air pollution based on associations between air pollution and individual risks for a host of health conditions and mortality net of individual- and community-level confounders. Methods: This is a multilevel prospective cohort study based a nationally representative sample of Chinese elders. The main outcome measures in this study include life expectancy estimated from mortality and health expectancies based on five health conditions including activity of daily living (ADL), instrumental activity of daily living (IADL), cognitive status, self-rated health, and chronic conditions. Results: Net of the controls, exposure to outdoor air pollution corresponded to subsequent reductions of LE and HEs for all five health conditions. These detrimental pollution effects were stronger for women. The gap in LE between areas with good air quality and moderately heavily polluted areas was 3.78 years for women of age 65 and 0.93 for men. The differences in HEs at age 65 were also large, ranging from 1.47 years for HE for good self-rated health in men to 5.20 years for ADL-disability-free HE in women. Conclusions: Air pollution has devastating health impacts on Chinese elders reducing longevity and shortening health expectancies. Women are more vulnerable than men. More strict air policy should be implemented to pursue sustainable development in China

Survival Differences among Native-Born and Foreign-Born Older Adults in the United States

Studies show that the U.S. foreign-born population has lower mortality than the native-born population before age 65. Until recently, the lack of data prohibited reliable comparisons of U.S. mortality by nativity at older ages. This study provides reliable estimates of U.S. foreign-born and native-born mortality at ages 65 and older at the end of the 20(th) century. Life expectancies of the U.S. foreign born are compared to other developed nations and the foreign-born contribution to total life expectancy (TLE) in the United States is assessed.Newly available data from Medicare Part B records linked with Social Security Administration files are used to estimate period life tables for nearly all U.S. adults aged 65 and older in 1995. Age-specific survival differences and life expectancies are examined in 1995 by sex, race, and place of birth.Foreign-born men and women had lower mortality at almost every age from 65 to 100 compared to native-born men and women. Survival differences by nativity were substantially greater for blacks than whites. Foreign-born blacks had the longest life expectancy of all population groups (18.73 [95% confidence interval {CI}, 18.15-19.30] years at age 65 for men and 22.76 [95% CI, 22.28-23.23] years at age 65 for women). The foreign-born population increased TLE in the United States at older ages, and by international comparison, the U.S. foreign born were among the longest-lived persons in the world.Survival estimates based on reliable Medicare data confirm that foreign-born adults have longer life expectancy at older ages than native-born adults in the United States

Use of the average age ratio method in analyzing age heaping in censuses: The case of China

Based on the methods of the average period age ratio and the average cohort age ratio, this study systematically assesses age heaping or digit preference in all population censuses of China. Our study finds that the overall age heaping was relatively low in the Chinese censuses; however, there was a notable preference for ages ending with zero after age 50 in the first two censuses, despite a weakening trend over time. Our study further shows that age heaping in China’s censuses is likely associated with age-related policies such as those on late marriage and retirement. As shown in the study, the average age ratio method can be an alternative of the Whipple’s Index and be improved if the size of birth cohort was taken into account when the number of births is generally reliable

Older parents benefit more in health outcome from daughters’ than sons’ care in China

Objectives: To examine whether older parents in China would benefit more from daughters’ care than from sons’ care. Methods: Analysis of the unique datasets of the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey conducted in 2002, 2005 and 2008-2009 in 22 provinces. Results: As compared to having son(s), having daughter(s) is significantly more beneficial at older ages in China, with regards to maintaining higher cognitive capacity and reducing mortality risk. Such daughter-advantages are more profound among the oldest-old aged 80+ as compared to the young-old aged 65-79, and surprisingly more profound in rural areas as compared to urban areas, even though son-preference is much more common among rural residents. Discussion: We describe how educational campaigns aimed at informing the public about the benefits of daughter(s) for older parents’ health outcome could help promote gender equality and reduce traditional son-preference, especially in rural China